


Caduceus

by Lilliburlero



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers, The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Blackmail, Canon Typical Attitudes, Gen, Homophobic Language, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, RAF - Freeform, Stealth Crossover, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 20:50:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: Bim has trouble paying attention at a routine briefing. He's got a lot going on.*Content note: anti-Welsh sentiment compounded by casual racism of a period-typical sort, other period-typical attitudes.





	Caduceus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elstaplador](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Torchbearers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8175052) by [AJHall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJHall/pseuds/AJHall). 



> This is, more or less, a missing scene from AJ Hall's fic ['The Torchbearers'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8175052). You definitely should read 'The Torchbearers,' but all you need to know for the purposes of this story that a sinister character (who could it be?) is blackmailing gay servicemen on the Bridstow scene - for 'hush-hush' material rather than mere financial gain. Bim, as the result of events at a Certain Birthday Party, starts to suspect what is going on and confides in his fellow pilot Viscount St George, who involves his sleuth uncle.
> 
> *
> 
> To elstaplador's long-ago prompt for Ace: Bim Taylor (and optional St George)

The Met. Officer got up, to the usual light ritual groan. Bim didn’t add his voice; he overvalued originality, he supposed, but he couldn’t find the comfort that most people seemed to in repetition and formula. He didn’t despise them for it, though, not any more. He drummed three fingers on the green-baize-covered trestle table and stared through ‘Millie’ Barr and his blackboard at a wall of majuscule: CHECK YOUR IDENT LETTERS NAME TAXYING TIMES NP RANK WHITEBAIT USE YOUR NUMBER LUXSOAP ONLY… words words words except my life except my life except my life This was no bloody good. He had to concentrate.

‘…expected to remain clear, with slight five-knot winds coming in from the north-east…’ 

There was a blob of mercury, heavy and cool, worming around under his scalp; if he didn’t catch it would reach his eye and blind him—blindness was Jerry’s bugbear, not his. Jerry. He daren’t look along the table, that would damn them both, damn them to what? Hell, he needed this like he needed actual heavy metal poisoning—you did, in fact, didn’t you, if you got a dose of mercury, feel as if something was crawling on you?—he’d approached Jerry because of Ralph, and now it looked awfully like Jerry was taking the role Ralph had vacated, the gallant gentleman officer, politely pretending that he didn’t notice you, wallflower, were languishing for the love of him, except it was worse, Jerry had to pretend he didn’t know you were a poof as well, like the boys at school with their clean long haunches and their _trial-marriage-rationally-considered-is-a-jolly-good-idea_ though to be fair Eton and Christ Church did it with a good deal more panache than Experiment House… 

‘…icing at ten thousand feet…’ 

Well, fuck that. He didn’t let them pretend and he didn’t let them forget. It had been mere pride, to start with, but he’d found, to his astonishment, it was armour too, cap à pie, against that to which the butch types were terrifyingly vulnerable. It didn’t make any particular sense, except psychologically: he had as much to lose as any of them, but if the blackmailer was who he thought it was, he was doing it was much for kicks as spondulicks, and there were no kicks in publish and be damned, buzz, buzz, were his gums receding from his teeth? It felt like it. He needed a drink to take the edge off. 

‘...on the return, the reverse, I'm sorry to say, though improving on the final leg…’ 

Jesus Christ, he’d missed pretty much all of it. Nothing to be done, he’d pick it up somehow, it was only weather, except he couldn’t remember a damn thing about the rest of the briefing either. The little WAAF corporal at the typewriter had been given such a low stool that her waxy, impassive face rested at the level of Millie’s crotch, a surrealistic figleaf. 

‘…to be wet. That’s all from me, gentlemen, if I could hand you back to the Wing Commander…’ 

He sounded like the MC of the world’s dreariest cabaret. The freshly-appointed W/C (Welsh, verbose, instantly dubbed Dai Thermals) started in, but there was scant hope of gathering anything much from the hot air of his closing précis. It would fall into place, Bim thought desperately, it always did once you were in the air. The quicksilver silverfish began a slow circumnavigation of his eyesocket and before he could help himself he swatted it with the back of his forefingers. Dai Thermals paused and loomed down deliberately, in fact rather camply, upon him. 

‘Taylor, is it? Are you quite all right?’ 

‘Yes, sir. Bluebottle, sir. Must’ve found the butcher’s window thin pickings, so he buzzed up here.’ 

It wasn’t much, but it raised a general grim snort. The W/C, still new enough to be conspicuously morale-conscious, pursed his lips. ‘Very well.’ 

Hoping to catch a word with Jerry as they left the hut, Bim got snagged by Durrant, whom he loathed, supercilious shit. 

‘Fancy, _drawing attention_ to you like that. Whatever were their Airships thinking, landing us with that grotty little sheep-shagger? Say what you like about the old Staysh—’ 

The mercury dribble had become a red-hot awl, burrowing in above Bim's left eye. ’The Vatican officially certified him as a relic in 1918? Fragment of the Holy Prepuce, give it a tug and a forty-eight hour pass out of Purgatory—’ 

Durrant opened and shut his mouth, affronted. ‘Well, I think that’s not quite de—’ 

‘Why d'you say “little,” I wonder?’ announced a saving, familiar voice from behind them. 

Durrant’s scrawny neck swivelled in its cravat. ‘I beg your pardon?’ 

‘Welshmen,’ Jerry clarified brightly. ‘One always says “little Welshman,” but Dai there is six foot three in his socks, and best part of sixteen stone in dehydrated an’ powdered form, you know.’ 

‘They’re—psychic pygmies. Ab—aboriginal races always—’ 

‘I b’lieve I saw the Psychic Pygmies once,’ Bim rallied in his Old India Hand voice. ‘End of the pier, Weston-super-mare, must’ve been ninety-six, no, ninety-eight—’ 

Durrant raised both hands to chest-level and jerked his head convulsively downwards. ‘Oh, oh!—grow up!’ he exclaimed, and stalked off. 

Jerry gazed after him in a genial pastiche of thoughtfulness. ‘Reminds me of m’dear old mater, sometimes. Speaking of our esteemed elders, Uncle Peter says yes, it’s exactly as you thought. Blackmail, for money at first, but quickly moving to classified papers. He’s interested in taking it on, and he wants to talk to you.’ 

Bim exhaled, realising he had not done so at such length or volume for quite some time. His next breaths were shallow. ‘Where? I mean—meeting in Bridstow, I’d be afraid it’d get back before it got anywhere.’ 

‘Quite. You’re to wire as soon as you can get a pass, and he’ll drive over. There’s a roadhouse, quite secluded, in the hills past Kenster. It’s called—I thought you might appreciate this—the Live and Let Live.’ 

Bim chuckled weakly. To conceal the tremor in his hands he felt for his cigarettes. 

‘Here, have one of mine,’ Jerry said. They withdrew under the eaves of the hut to light up, and stood for a moment in silence, watching blue and buff figures crossing the concrete square. 

‘Wimsey?’ Bim remembered, with a pang of the early-morning sheet-kicking variety, his quip at the news that the squadron was to be graced with a viscount. _Well, I think they should always use their titles, my dear. Jerry Wimsey sounds like a Gestapo striptease artiste._

‘Mm?’ 

‘Will you—will you come? Make the thing look—’ 

‘Natural? Hauling a reliably charming companion along to share the load of amusing a distinctly _strict_ favourite uncle? If you don't mind not being the first to take the part, though it's been _exclusively_ a female juvenile lead since I left school, if that helps at all, and I can wangle a pass at the same time, of course, there’s nothing I’d like more.’ He glanced down at Bim over his left shoulder, free hand thrust deep in his trouser pocket, making, for the casual observer, a perfect recruiting image of the dashing flyboy, angular and stylised. ‘If we’re taking the twelve hours, might as well make a night of it. I’ll book a room.’

**Author's Note:**

> The Live and Live Inn appears in Renault's _Purposes of Love_ as the place where Mic and Vivian go for a pretty glum little holiday.


End file.
